We have recently been celebrating my wife's birthday with many activities, including concerts. Among these were an Indian dance concert at Kennedy Center, an extraordinary performance of Mozart's 23rd piano concerto by Christoph Eschenbach, and an unforgettable performance of Lutoslawski's Concerto for Orchesta at the B.S.O. The last of the concerts is discussed in this little essay, a performance by Sweet Honey in the Rock.
Many of you are probably familiar with this excellent a capella African-American female group; if you aren't I suggest you should. Founded in Washington D.C. back in 1973, the group, composed of five singers few of whom are original members, sings Gospel, spirituals, political, and secular--sometimes even saucy--songs. When they are good, they are very very good indeed. During this performance--we had heard them before--the emphasis was on spiritual music. They began with the familiar spiritual, "I been buked and I been scorned; I been talked about sure's yaw born." What lovely words, and what even lovelier music. They sang it with elegance and deep emotion; it was a wonderful moment. They then sang a spiritual that I've heard before but I don't know by name. It was about someone at a dying person's bedside providing consolation and asking the dying person to greet their common friends and relatives on the other side. Such a premise has indeed wound up in horrible, cliched music, but this is never the case with spirituals. They can move the most sophisticated--provided that the listeners haven't lost their soul. What might sound kitschy without the music is profound with it. I was moved almost to tears. Later came the familiar and wonderful "Somebody callin my name, O Lordy...What shall I do?" Again, wonderful words and even more wonderful music. They were perhaps a bit too mellow here, at least for my taste--There is a very gripping performance of this spiritual on CD, sung beautifully by Jessye Norman, accompanied by a mostly white chorus, which was excellent.
The newer music, including numbers composed by members of this impressive group, was less successful. This is one of the points I want to make--This is not a very religious age, and newer spiritual music is often much less, well, musical, than the great works of the past. One of the pieces included such horrible lines as "Sacred is the milk from the bosom of Mother Nature"--a line one could imagine that a ten year old with a lot to learn might come up with. The music wasn't much better, although when sung by such talented musicians, almost anything can sound good. The exception was a new song written by one of the most dignified members of the group. Both the words and music are good. The song included such lines that state that, once one is deeply religious, "It doesn't matter if you're here or there." The rest of the lyric and the music matched this deep level of understanding, as opposed to the New-Age cliches of the song mentioned before this one. It wasn't nearly as deeply moving as the spirituals, but it was a bona fide religious song, a rarity for this age.
Comparing the spirituals with the newer music, I thought of what an old friend once told me, "What's good for the Jews is bad for Judaism and what's good for Judaism is bad for the Jews." We can see the same principle at work in the increased amount of concern for others among the Japanese in response to their recent national disaster. The premise is this: it is in the times of great pressure when diamonds are created. Among the jewels of the spirit composed in difficult times are spirituals. They are truly amazing. They have no bitterness, egotism, superficiality and lack all the glittery things modern music is full of. They go right to the jugular and yet have great artistry--which includes, of course, understatement and restraint. My view of this is that during times of great oppression, superficial persons either do not survive, or are crushed into silence, or become profound. Another way of saying this is evinced by Nietzsche's great dictum: whatever almost kills you makes you stronger. No decent person could ever advocate bringing back say, slavery, to get great music, but music, unfortunately, like everything else, tends to be contaminated by froth during fat times. (Perhaps there is a Darwinian explanation of depression here: the dissatisfied separate themselves from the group and create, the results of which abet survival.) What a world we would have if the haves could submerge their superficiality in the servce to, and love of, the so many million of have-nots! We would not only have better people, but better art. What's good for prosperity is bad for the spirit, what's bad for the spirit is good for prosperity--Too, too bad.
When I was a lot younger, I would often dance to the music of Mahalia Jackson with my African-American son, Philip, who was a toddler at the time. The music moved me very much and still does. Some years later, I wrote the following poem, which touches on the theme of this article. (This poem, by the way, resulted in the greatest compliment one of my poems ever received. An English professor was so moved by this poem that he carried a copy of it in his wallet.) I want to assure you that I do not share--far from it--the sunny-nunny view that God never gives more suffering than one can handle. A lot of good people go under when times get rough; others, afflicted by adverse personal or political events, are sometimes transformed and reach a stage that the rest of us find hard to imagine. When they become artists, a sensitive person's viceral response is both delight and awe.
HOMAGE TO MAHALIA JACKSON
1.
At the very height of suffering,
most are destroyed; the wounded rest
survive to limp toward nothing
on paths short or long; lost
except for very, very few
who become immortal songs.
From her best recordings I imagine
the transport of Aquinas’s last years.
Dust has no kingdom in such music:
to her, death’s a gate we pass through
on the low road to glory; Lordy,
who can hear and believe she was wrong?
2.
Despite music, darkness reigns
still inside, outside us.
Which is final? Who has ears,
hear her, singing conviction,
especially Lazarus, lost in affliction:
light, pure light, it can reach you.
3.
Her message was joy
because she knew
her people then
could ill afford
the luxury of sadness.
Poverty, madness,
and hate’s unbearable load
had killed far too many
for her to sing blues.
No girl’s or boy’s
lament over toys
broken in two
by hard fate in
her! On sorrow’s road
she reveals joy which is
got without illness
or drugs: (Lord,
Lord, this simple woman,
how well she knew
what God is!) love.
No comments:
Post a Comment